Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.

TORSO by Keri Healey

Here at Shock Room I am called upon to understand many creatures. Vampires steal the blood of others in order to live. Werewolves are ruled by the moon’s cycle. Ghosts seek what they were denied in life, usually justice. Zombies? They’ve gotta walk, man. They’ve gotta walk and eat.

What do human beings want? Oh, only about seven billion things.

People are mysterious. The more a storyteller embraces this reality the more likely I am to become engrossed in the story.

Easy, cliche-riddled answers to life’s questions are routinely fed to us by Hollywood. Reality TV is actually a perfectly structured genre, as artificial as popular fantasy programs of the 1960s. Both the Hollywood blockbuster and the reality show subsist on our desire for escapist entertainment, but from what are we escaping? Perhaps from the knowledge that life is never this simple and our fellow humans are–however close and intimate we may feel–a mystery. All we have to go on are the words they say to us, and the actions we witness. What are our loved ones and friends and acquaintances like, when we’re not around?

With clear-eyed audacity and an extraordinary gift for locating and signifying what characters really want, Keri Healey brings the Printer’s Devil production of her play Torso to Theatre Off Jackson. Anyone who likes serious theatrical performance ought to see it.

Seattle-area writer Daphne Maas has been ejected from a flight to Minnesota. In an inebriated state she manages to hail a taxi. Over the course of an increasingly awkward conversation Daphne discovers that the driver, Eddie is a guy she once met and rejected through an online dating service. Once they get past the who-said-what and the hurt feelings, Eddie and Daphne begin to talk about her reasons for flying to Minnesota. When Daphne is unable to find the key to her apartment, the two spend a long night wandering pubs and streets and piecing together two stories.

The first tale is the toughest, because it’s personal. It seems that Daphne’s adventurous sister died after being diagnosed with a minor illness. Daphne isn’t over the trauma of her sister’s death. Every new revelation about her upbringing and her sister’s marriage to a drunken lout only brings us closer to Daphne’s unanswered grief.

The second tale is horrific. In a bizarre display of outrage and sibling hatred, a brother and sister with whom Daphne attended school–Dominick and Marlo Roy, played with unflinching commitment by Stephen Hando and Susanna Burney–have been arrested for the murder of their more prosperous brother.

The telling of this second tale, ascribing motive to the bare facts of the case as reported in the news, provides a common purpose for Daphne and Eddie. As they eat and drink and walk around town they piece together what might have happened, and we see their best guesses played out on stage. Every conversation about the darker recesses of the human heart brings us a bit closer to the completion of an irredeemable act. And closer to understanding that the people who perpetrate that act feel it is entirely justified.

Ultimately what we experience in this starkly designed, magnificently acted drama is the cold rush of knowing the damage a real person, an ordinary person, is capable of committing. Most drama veers away at the last moment. Few writers are willing to say what we secretly intuit, that we are self-justifying creatures who can be driven to do just about anything, given the right circumstances. Kudos, then, to Keri Healey for taking that scary trip all the way down the road to its shocking yet natural conclusion. This is theater for grownups.

Setting aside the expert direction of David Bennett, the superb design, and the note-perfect script, you must see the astonishing performances by some of Seattle’s finest actors. Susanna Burney and Stephen Hando are electrifying as have-nots who decide to change their luck at any cost. Sarah Rudinoff and John Q. Smith, as Daphne and Eddie, bring so much real-life sexuality and charisma to their roles, I would be happy to see them in every show from now on. They are that compelling, intimate, and down-to-earth. And in smaller but essential roles as Daphne’s sister and Dominick’s girlfriend, Emily Chisholm is breathtaking. I checked the program every time she entered because I thought I was seeing a different person playing each character. Not only her voice and manner and hair and costume, but her skin tone and her eyes changed. You won’t believe it unless you see it yourself.

So, go! Buy a ticket to Torso to see some gritty theater about real emotions and what we do to make ourselves okay. And see how hard we try to pretend that we are not like those other people–you know, them.

Through March 31, Thurs-Sat nights @ 8:00
Theatre Off Jackson
409 7th Avenue South
Seattle, 98104 (in the International District)
Tickets $15 at Brown Paper Tickets, $18 at the door

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.